Jasper Fforde: Shades of Grey

And then we were past the open door and the color and the wonder; and the rabbit, which had earlier seemed such a fantastically attractive idea, somehow seemed dull and pointless. The train station was also in this direction, and we would not pass this way again today, if ever.

But something happened. There was a scuffle and a thump and several shouts, and a few seconds later, a National Color employee rushed into the street.

“You!” he said, pointing to the first Grey he saw. “Fetch a swatchman and be quick about it!”

It was one of those moments when you are suddenly glad someone might be unwell, or even dead. For Dad was a swatchman, and someone else’s misfortune might just get me inside a Paint Shop, even if only for a few minutes. I tapped him on the arm.

“Dad—?”

He shook his head. It wasn’t his responsibility. There would be plenty of health practitioners in Vermillion, and if the situation turned brown, he’d be the one shouldering the bad feedback. I had to think fast. I tapped my wrist where I would have worn a watch, then made a rabbit-ears signal with my fingers. Dad understood instantly, turned on his heel and made straight for the door of the Paint Shop. As far as he was concerned, a choice between negative feedback and avoiding the rabbit was no choice at all. And that was it. We didn’t see the Last Rabbit, and I was on my way to being eaten by a yateveo.

The sweet smell of synthetic color tweaked my nostrils the moment we stepped into the shop. It was an instantly recognizable odor, a curious mixture of scorched toffee apples, rice pudding and mothballs that put me in mind of the annual repaintings I witnessed as a child. We’d all stand downwind of the painters, breathing in deeply. The smell of fresh paint was inextricably linked to preparations for Foundation Day, and to renewal.

“Who are you?” demanded the Blue colorist who had instructed the Grey, eyeing Dad’s Red Spot suspiciously.

“Holden Russett,” said Dad, “holiday relief swatchman class II.”

“Right,” was the gruff reply. “Do your thing, then.”

While Dad knelt to attend to his patient, I looked about curiously. On the walls were samples of National Color’s full range of universally viewable hues, a guide to colorizing your garden “on a budget” and a poster advertising an all-new color that had just been added to the Long Swatch: a shade of yellow that would give bananas Chromatic independence from lemons and custard. There were also full-sized tissue paper outlines for murals, with numbers for easy reference printed on the blocked panels; and next to the counter were displays of mixing kettles, maulsticks, thinners, reabsorbers, every sort of brush imaginable and, for the prestigiously large jobs, rollers. Beyond the stored cans of paint I could also see the entrance to the Magnolia Room, where customers cleared their visual palette before savoring a particularly fine hue.

Dad nudged me, and I knelt next to him on the floor. The patient was a mature, well-dressed man of perhaps sixty and was lying prone, head on one side, with eyes staring blankly into the middle distance.

He had upset a pot of blue on the way down, and the staff were busily scraping the floor with scoops and trowels to get the valuable pigment back into the can.

Dad asked the man his name and, when there was no answer, swiftly opened his leather traveling swatch case and clipped a monitor to the patient’s earlobe.

“Hold his hand and keep an eye on his vitals.”

The monitor took a moment to read his internal music, and the middle light glowed without flashing, which was a good sign. Steady amber—it might be something as simple as the summer vapors.

Dad dug his hand into the man’s breast pocket, pulled out his patient’s merit book, then flipped to the back page to read his Chromatic rating.

“Oh, flip,” he said, in the way that meant only one thing.

“Purple?” I asked.

“Red 68, Blue 81,” he affirmed, and I obediently wrote the rating on the man’s forearm while Dad dialed the correct offset into the spectacles. I hadn’t planned on following him into the profession but had been around him long enough to know the drill. Although many of the broad-effect healing hues used in Chromaticology worked irrespective of one’s color perception, the more subtle shades needed Standard Vision to have an effect on the cortex—hence the color offset on the spectacles.

“He’s a Purple?” echoed one of the salespeople in a worried tone. Purples looked after their own, and if anyone had slacked in his attempt to maintain this man’s continuance of life, there could be severe repercussions.

“Seventy-four percent,” I remarked after doing some impressive head math, then added, perhaps unnecessarily, “almost certainly a prefect.”

We rolled the man over so he was on his side, and as soon as the staff and the customers saw the Purple Spot pinned to his lapel, they all went quiet. Only an Ultraviolet having an inconvenient dying event right here in their store would cause more headaches. But this placed Dad under pressure, too. If he tauped this, he’d have not only negative feedback, but some serious explaining to do. Little wonder swatchmen generally stayed away from passing shouts.

“We should have gone to see the rabbit,” he murmured, placing the offset spectacles over the man’s eyes. “Give me a 35-89-96.”

I ran my fingers down the small glass discs in his traveling swatch case, selected the glass he wanted and handed it over.

I repeated “35-89-96” in a professional tone.

“Sixty-eight point two foot-candles left eye,” said Dad as he slipped the disc into the appropriate side of the spectacles. He set the light value into his flasher, and a high-pitched whine told us the device was charging. I dutifully wrote the time, code, dosage and eye on the Purple’s forehead so follow-on practitioners would know what had been given, and as soon as the flasher was ready, Dad called out, “Cover!” and all those in the shop closed their eyes tightly. I heard a high-pitched squeak as the flasher discharged the light through the colored glass and the offset, and from there to the retina and the man’s visual cortex. It was an odd feeling that you never really became used to. My first flash had been for my combined Ebola-Measles-H6N14 inoculation at age six, and for a brief exciting moment I could see music and hear colors—or at least, that’s what it felt like. I also salivated for the rest of the day, which was usual, and could smell bread for a week, which wasn’t.

I felt the Purple patient tense as the color seeped into his visual cortex. The disc was a light orange, and enough to bring the Purple back into consciousness. Quite how it did this, no one knew. For all its extraordinary benefits to the Collective’s health, Chromaticology remained a poorly understood science.

For Dad, it wasn’t important. He didn’t mix or research the necessary hues; he just diagnosed the problem and administered the required shade. When Dad was in a self-effacing mood, he called it “healing by numbers.”

But aside from laughing out loud without regaining consciousness—an uncommon but not unheard-of reaction—the Purple actually got worse .

“Flashing amber,” I noted from the monitor.

“We’re losing him,” breathed Dad, handing back the 35-89-96. “Give me a 116-37-97.”

I selected the light green disc and handed it over. Dad swapped to the other eye, yelled “Cover!” again and flashed. The Purple’s left leg contracted violently, and his vitals dropped to flashing red and amber.

Dad quickly requested a 342-94-98 to bring the Purple back onto an even keel and reverse the effects of the 35-89-96. This did have a radical effect—in the wrong direction. For with a shudder, all vital signs vanished completely and the ear monitor flicked to steady red.